i2c2 Conference
6th/7th March
Manchester
Contributions by attendees:
Sam Aston
Lorraine Beard
Ros Bell
Rosie Jones
Vanessa McHugh
Ciaran Talbot
i2c2Conference
…and there was
Lego.
The opening sentence of the i2c2 website was “Using
Positive Disruption to improve libraries”, and the conference
at The Hive in Manchester’s Northern Quarter certainly
encouraged innovative and inventive thinking from its
delegates.
In this report you’ll find our Top 10 picks of the conference.
Some of our favourite bits, whether they’re from specific
talks, or more general concepts from the conference as a
whole. There will be thoughts on how these ideas can be
used at the University and top tips on how to think in an
innovative way, and get your ideas implemented.
Take aways
Guerrilla Ethos: What academic librarians can learn from tactical urbanism and
tactical urban libraries // Karen Munro
Karen Munro, head of University of Oregon Portland Library & Learning Commons,
presented on the notion of Tactical Urbanism and what academic libraries can learn
from it. Tactical Urbanism is a method of communities taking ownership of public
spaces by employing tactics and ideas that benefit the community as a whole.
Whether they require some or no involvement from the public, are an individual
acting their own or an organised group, all tactical urbanist strategies have some
things in common, says Munro, “They are community-focused, inexpensive,
entrepreneurial, and easy to replicate. Most of all, they are accessible to the ordinary
individual, without the need for specialised training or qualifications.”
1. Using creativity to
engage customers
Munro spoke about ‘The
power of the pilot’, and
how low cost, low
threshold pilots could
prove concepts. Treat the
concept as an hypothesis
rather than the definitive
solution. Using
Prototyping is key to
develop the final offer.
An NYC pop up library
Echoes in the library: Programmes and services for users in their 20s and 30s //
Sam Helmick and Mallorie Graham.
Sam Helmick and Mallorie Graham were talking about getting their local
communities involved in their public library by using creativity to engage. With
specific reference to ‘echo boomers’.
Helmick and Graham spoke about the different types of events they had organised in
order to engage these ‘echo boomers’ Doctor Who events, Comic Con, Big bang
Theory bowling and had a gaming library.
This is something that would apply well to WP, and fits in really well in with the
Creating Communities strategy strand.
“Echo Boomers are the catalyst to several social, economic, and
technological changes. This generation, also referred to as
Millennials or Generation Y, have shown to be a more tolerant and
open demographic in society. They are always digitally connected
and are shifting the practices of information curation, retrieval,
and analytics. However, this is the smallest group of community
users in public libraries today.”
A designer walks into a library... // Paul-Jervis Heath.
Paul-Jervis Heath leads an innovation programme at Cambridge University
Library, and spoke about the Importance of design thinking in innovation .
Heath quoted Bill Burnett “to re-invent a future that doesn’t exist you have to
understand what users do now and re-imagine it”. Use techniques such as diary
studies and shadowing to understand users workarounds, habits, values and
think about how design intervention or innovation can help. “When it comes to
innovation market research won’t provide all the answers as users often don’t
know what they need.”
Heath suggested searching for clichés; the typical features and benefits of a
service; interaction clichés – how frequently people buy or use things; pricing
clichés. Once identified, you can disrupt clichés, invert them, reverse them,
scale them, reinvent them to create something entirely different. See Heath’s
presentation here.
2. Library Design
Library design challenge: make-a-space workshop
Christina Mune and Mallory Debartolo from San Jose State University ran the
‘Library design challenge: make-a-space workshop’. Time to flex the Blue Peter
sticky back plastic skills! They described the challenge they face in addressing
Library space redesign back home. They noted the 3 aspects of a Library Ecosystem
that make a space ‘work’ are:
Access to information - Tools and Technology - Comfort and Ownership
One might compare the traditional space in the Main Library with the space in the
AGLC and possibly conclude students feel they have more ownership over the
latter because they’re able to control the space. It would be interesting to see if this
influenced the effectiveness of work and learning.
Before Christina and Mallory cracked out the library construction kits, they ran
through a few Libraries with features of note.
North Carolina State University Hunt
Library’s Connections Wall. In fact, have
a look at Hunt Library in general, it looks
amazing.
A Japanese library in
Saitama Prefecture,
Hanno which has RFID
tags you can scan with
your smart phone.
Warwick University
Grids, in which every
item of furniture is on
wheels, for truly
dynamic spaces.
Singapore Polytechnic Library which
includes Drawing Rooms; rooms
where all the walls and tables are
writeable on with white board marker.
Key note speaker Brendan Dawes is obsessed with beautiful visual representations
of data. He explores data as physical objects, as something you can bump into as well
as data you can hold in your hands, on paper or on a phone.
He pleads for “More signal and less noise”. Dawes pulls snippets of data from the
news and various databases and assigns them to visual events, by doing this he can
anchor it to our memories and add life to data.
3. Filling for Rectangles //
Brendan Dawes
A library creates and logs vast swathes of statistics, but Dawes inspires new ways
of thinking about data, and therefore the way it is presented.
“Data by itself is not enough –
what data needs is poetry!”
The Kennedy App is a way to
mark moments in time
complete with context of the
things happening around you.
Kennedy will capture your
location, the date and time,
the current weather
conditions, the latest world
news headlines together with
what music you're listening to
at the time. Add a note or a
photo and then save it to the
archive of captured moments.
Megan Lotts, an Arts Librarian from Rutgers University in New Jersey had myriad
maker/craft-based activities for helping to de-stress students, as well as learn. She
has previously organised pumpkin carving sessions, DIY photo booths, make your
own bookmark and an edible book making competition (as pictured).
Maker spaces are a common occurrence in academic libraries in the United States.
The Library could draw inspiration from some from some of these spaces, which are
well established in the US. Maker spaces are essential for understanding critical
making as well as engaging students with our spaces. We could use graffiti walls,
‘express your stress’ photobooths to help during exam time, for example.
4. Implementing a culture of creativity:
Engaging events and making in the
academic library // Megan Lotts
“The Old
Mango and
the Pea” –
Winner of an Edible
Book competition.
Making ideas
happen
One of the key techniques to adopt if you are trying to be innovative, is getting
buy in from decision makers. It is essential to be able to bridge the gap
between ideas, and making those ideas a reality. You need influencing skills in
bringing people with you when it comes to innovation. The table below helps
with that.
5.
Liking Add a human connection
Frame the idea around who it is going to affect.
Commitment and
consistency
In line with your mission statement (consistency)
Idea serves your Library community
(commitment)
Reciprocity An unsolicited favour for a favour.
Start with a big idea, then back off to a smaller
request.
Scarcity Limited supply – no guarantee the product will
last long.
Deadlines – the clock is ticking!
Authority Be the authority of your idea – do your research!
Get hold of an expert in your area of interest.
Social Proof Lots of examples to show your idea isn’t new or
risky
Use other organisations that are similar to yours.
Barriers to
Innovation
There were two group
sessions at i2c2, which
was refreshing as group
work and discussion isn’t
something you always
get chance for at a
conference. We were set
a challenge: What are the
barriers to innovation?
Each group identified
very similar barriers. The
main themes were:
• Unwilling
Management
• Cynicism among
staff and
management
• Lack of funds
• Lack of time
• Not enough
backing
A group’s impression of barriers to innovation
6.
Conferences can provide a brilliant forum for sharing ideas and techniques, but usually only a few people from each organisation can go. The library of University College Dublin organised a conference that everyone was able to attend. The Library was staffed by security for a day, which enabled all staff to benefit from an internally organised conference; with a program similar to that one would find in an external conference.
This could be of benefit to our library staff as well. It would be brilliant for engagement, for showing that employees and their ideas are valued and for spreading information.
Library
conference 7.
Library book
club for 1st years 8. We help students by orientating them
around the library, but we could be
helping them make friends, expand
their critical reading skills and
demystify the library all at once with a
book club for first years. At University
College Dublin, each first year is given
a book and the option to attend a book
club style meet up to discuss it. These
are informal, laid back gatherings and
allow students to engage in a thought
provoking and academic way without it
being course related.
Involving
It is important to involve your customers in important decisions that affect the
service you provide, but it’s often hard to engage people. Ideas Jams (pictured) can
be an effective ay of harnessing a large number of customer’s ideas. It also allows
for a no-pressure environment, where people can really be honest, as well as be
inspired by other people’s suggestions. This could also be useful to capture staff
ideas.
You can also customer input to help with building design. There were some DIY, low-
cost suggestions (see picture pages at the end), in a Blue Peter style, where
students would use craft items to build a model of their ideal library. It is also
possible to use Minecraft to get students’ design input into library spaces.
9.
Using Ketso to
Manage Challenges Mapping the information landscape: Using Ketso to help academic librarians
understand and manage change // Andrew Whitworth, Maria-Carme Torras Calvo,
Bodil Moss, Nazareth Amlesom Kifle and Terje Blåsternes.
This study was undertaken in the first phases of the “Changing Libraries” project, a
collaboration between the universities of Manchester, Stavanger (Norway) and the
Høgeskolen i Bergen (Norway), in which researchers studied how change was
managed in academic libraries. One library had several campuses being merged, the
other was undergoing a change of management. Both are potentially high stress
situations, with possibilities of staff disillusionment.
Ketso can help us understand and manage change, by concept mapping – essentially,
a map of cognition. The way that Ketso uses visual imagery, promotes reflection and
reveals the ‘taken-for-granted’. By using Ketso you can better identify problems and
suggest solutions, by grouping related concepts.
10.
Ketso kits are, in short, reuseable workshop kits in a bag. However, Ketso also offers a structured
way to run a workshop, using re-useable coloured shapes to capture everyone's ideas. Ketso is
unique in that each part is designed to act as a prompt for effective engagement. It is used as a tool
for engaging everyone and allowing all workshop attendees to have a voice. www.ketso.com
Some photos…
What we enjoyed about the conference Ciaran’s self-designed name badge and lego kit
More barriers to innovation De-lego-gates
Design a library kit